Disclosure? No, hyprocrisy

From today’s editorials: The Republicans resists a type of campaign finance law they used to profess to support. Why can’t the public know where all that money comes from?

It’s a familiar enough argument, if a tired one that doesn’t entirely address the point. The way to confront all that influence wielded by the special interests with the money to make absurdly large political campaign contributions, we’ve long been told, is disclosure. Let the voters know who’s giving all that money, and to which politicians, and let them come to their own conclusions. That was the answer, said the opponents of campaign finance reform — a well-enough funded lot in their own right. Not limits on how much people could contribute or how much candidates could accept.

Talk about a farce. The U.S. Senate won’t even consider a bill that would require everyone, from corporations to unions to other politically minded high rollers, to engage in more such disclosure.

The need for that has been obvious since January, when an ever more conservative Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission that limits on campaign contributions in place for 60 years were unconstitutional. Now corporations have the same free-speech rights as people do, the court says. They have the right to spend all the money they want in support of the political candidates they like and against the ones they don’t.

That leaves the opponents of campaign finance reform — Republicans, in this case — resisting measures they used to profess to favor.

Why? Because they fear that requiring more information about campaign contributions will help the Democrats. The 41 votes they mustered in opposition to a bill sponsored by Sen. Charles Schumer means it can’t go any further.

Just listen to Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who has yet to encounter an attempt to regulate political spending that he wasn’t determined to obliterate.

“This bill is about protecting incumbent Democrats from criticism ahead of this November’s election — a transparent attempt to rig the fall election,” he claims.

And it’s not about the money, Mr. McConnell?

Why, just this week, a Republican-leaning political group buying TV ads on behalf of a GOP gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota reported that it accepted $150,000 from Target and $100,000 from Best Buy. Where’s the harm to the public interest in revealing that?

President Obama, who has denounced the Citizens United ruling, is right:

“A vote to oppose these reforms is nothing less than a vote to allow corporate and special-interest takeovers of our elections.”

Mr. Schumer, meanwhile, vows to try to get the 60 votes his bill needs after the Senate’s August recess. He’s open, too, to modifying the bill to win some Republican support.

Good for him. The people who used to call for disclosure deserve all of it that they can get. And so do the rest of us.